B2 EZ RE THE WASHINGTON POST.WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 2 , 2020
navirus sweeps across the coun-
try.
For months, parents, coaches
and health officers across the re-
gion and throughout the country
have agonized over the risks of
young athletes taking the field or
the court in the midst of a pan-
demic. They know that playing
sports helps a child’s physical and
mental well-being, teaches team-
work and develops social skills.
But they wonder if the risks —
even with safety protocols in place
— a re worth it.
“We think that sports are im-
portant, particularly for children
to participate in, and we want to
do it safely, but we also recognize
that there are risk factors,” said
Anne Arundel health officer
Nilesh Kalyanaraman.
Kalyanaraman said contact
tracers found about 22 people, on
average, who had been in contact
with each infected person linked
to youth sports in the county. All
were advised to quarantine. The
county did not have data on
whether any teammates or coach-
es of the infected people also con-
tracted the virus. But Kalyanara-
man said the sheer number of
contacts was “overwhelming to
our contact-tracing ability.”
“We were just seeing more cas-
es on teams and more quaran-
tines,” he said. “We felt it was time
to act.”
Jurisdictions across the Wash-
ington region and throughout the
country have taken different
stances on what is permitted for
traveling sports clubs, recreation-
al programs and high school
teams. In North Dakota, a corona-
virus hot spot, the governor
signed an order this month sus-
pending winter sports through
Dec. 14. Virginia allows sports but
limits spectators to less than 30
percent occupancy in a venue or
25 per field, and it requires screen-
ing coaches, officials, staff and
players for covid-19 symptoms. In
SPORTS FROM B1
Seeking
a level
playing field
for Md. kids
Recently, he said he asked his
children’s pediatrician if he was
an “idiot or an overzealous par-
ent” in his push to allow youth
sports. The doctor, he said, told
him: “Kids absolutely need to be
kids.”
Mulhern said he worries about
the toll that not playing sports is
having on children this year. His
son is eating more and spending
more time playing video games.
“It’s a dynamic change,” he said.
Angela Hansberry and her hus-
band, Paul, had more than a few
rounds of debate this summer
about whether their 16-year-old
son, Amani, would return to Team
Durant in the Nike Elite Youth
Basketball League when restric-
tions lifted in Maryland.
“When they said it was time to
go back, I was like, ‘Oh no, this is
not going to be good,’ ” the Silver
Spring mother said. “I wasn’t on
board. It seemed like the moms
were on one side, and the fathers
were on the other side of the spec-
trum.”
In June, when the team started
practicing, Hansberry could not
resist the glimmer of excitement
in her son’s eyes. She agreed he
could play, despite her near-obses-
sion with tracking the virus and
her own efforts — constantly
spraying Lysol on surfaces and in
the air — to keep infection out of
her home.
“I really was one of those moth-county,” said Earl Stoddard, the
head of emergency management
in Maryland’s most populous ju-
risdiction.
Montgomery rescinded a per-
mit for a major boys’ soccer tour-
nament after a Pennsylvania girl
who participated in a girls’ tour-
nament in the county a week earli-
er tested positive for the virus.
More than 3,000 people attended
the girls’ tournament, Stoddard
said. He did not know how many
people had contact with the in-
fected girl.
Health experts say the threat
posed by youth sports is not just
contact during the game or prac-
tice, which safety protocols can
mitigate. It is also the car pools
and the lunches after playing,
where youngsters might not fol-
low distancing rules.
“They go home,” Kalyanaraman
said of the players. “And they can
pass it onto somebody else. That’s
the core issue.”
Months before Mulhern got the
call about the positive case in his
league, he was one of 100 people
who protested outside of the gov-
ernor’s mansion, calling on Gov.
Larry Hogan (R) to let youth
sports in Maryland resume. Ho-
gan did so in May.
Mulhern said he disagrees with
Anne Arundel’s decision to shut
down youth sports again. He has
no regrets about his push to re-
sume play.D.C., Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D)
said last week she will soon an-
nounce new guidance on contact
sports.
And in Maryland, practices for
winter sports are to begin Dec. 7,
with games set for early January,
though counties and cities — such
as Anne Arundel — can opt out.
Howard and Baltimore counties
have also suspended youth sports.
Montgomery and Prince George’s
counties have restrictions based
on the level of contact. For exam-
ple, golf is considered low risk and
can be played, but football and
basketball are considered high
risk and are off-limits.
The varied rules have prompted
some youth coaches and teams to
resort to “county shopping,” as
some coaches have called it —
searching for a jurisdiction close
to home where games can be
played without a lot of scrutiny.
Coaches and parents in Prince
George’s, Montgomery and Anne
Arundel counties say they know of
teams that traveled to Cecil or
Harford counties, for example, to
play earlier this year. Mulhern
said he is familiar with a youth
baseball team from New Jersey
that used a field in Harford Coun-
ty because playing was restricted
in its home state.
“ While we do not allow youth
sports travel teams to come into
Montgomery County, we cannot
preclude them to go out of theIn a normal year, the only play-
ers that traveled out of state were
the ones who played on the team
made up of 14-year-olds. But this
year, determined to provide some
outlet and recreation to his young
charges, Byrd rounded up many of
the program’s 250 children to play
games in West Virginia, North
Carolina, Pennsylvania and Dela-
ware.
“It’s been a huge commitment... a long season for me,” Byrd
said, recalling drives as long as six
hours. “It’s been a lot on every-
body, including my volunteer
coaches. Everybody embraced it.
... The kids looked forward to the
one thing they had in terms of
social interaction.”
But some parents simply are
not willing to take the risk. Adrion
Howell, of Bowie, said his 14-year-
old daughter, Aaliyah, misses
playing volleyball with her travel
club — especially because she does
not get to see and hang out with
her teammates.
“It’s hard to protect the kids
when they are inside like that,” he
said. “There aren’t many ways to
socially distance or wear masks.”
Howell said he is open to allow-
ing Aaliyah to play if proper safety
measures are in place. But right
now he doesn’t see how that will
happen.
“I don’t know, I’m just con-
cerned about safety,” he said. “I
don’t want these kids to get ex-
posed, and adults too. You have
coaches and referees out there
too.”
[email protected]
ers. I don’t even know the term for
me,” she said. “I had the app on my
phone. I’d look at the cases every
day. Ask me and I could tell you
how many people were in the hos-
pital.”
One day — when her son
hugged her after returning home
from practice, and she cringed —
Hansberry decided she had to
calm herself down. “It was hard,”
she said with a pause. “It still is
hard.... You just learn to try to put
your trust in your community.”
S he and her husband consid-
ered allowing Amani to go to Ne-
vada for a tournament. The team
planned to rent a house and bring
in food so the players wouldn’t go
out. Then cases started spiking.
Paul Hansberry said the fathers
from the team texted each other.
The mothers did too.
The coach ultimately canceled
the trip and later organized an
eight-week tournament in Vir-
ginia with teams from along the
Interstate 95 corridor.
The pandemic first hit the re-
gion in March, as the Maryland
Heat Youth Football program was
about to start spring practices.
Everything shut down quickly.
When restrictions were lifted
and guidelines were put in place,
the teams from the Prince
George’s County-based program
began practicing in pods of 10,
spread out on eight different
fields, Coach Terrence Byrd said.
Most weekends they practiced in
Virginia. Byrd said another chal-
lenge was finding a field to play
their games.PHOTOS BY SARAH L. VOISIN/THE WASHINGTON POST
Determined to provide an outlet and recreation to young athletes,
Maryland Heat Youth Football Coach Terrence Byrd rounded up
players in his program to compete in games in West Virginia, North
Carolina, Pennsylvania and Delaware. Here, the team is shown
practicing in Alexandria behind Carl Sandburg Middle School.Before the holiday, Hogan an-
nounced an “all-hands-on-deck”
effort to ensure that bars and
restaurants adhered to restric-
tions. State police were directed
to be a part of enforcement nor-
mally handled by local police and
health departments.
The governor said the vaccine
distribution will have a “slow
takeoff,” much like testing efforts
this spring.
He said the state’s first batch of
the vaccine will include about
155,000 doses, roughly 50,000
from Pfizer and the rest from
Moderna.
“That’s a tiny fraction of what
we need,” he said, noting that
number would not cover half of
the state’s front-line workers.
The Washington region on
Tuesday reported 5,126 new coro-
navirus cases and 68 additional
deaths. Maryland had 2,765 cases
and 32 deaths, Virginia had 2,228
cases and 31 deaths, and D.C. had
133 cases and five deaths.
[email protected]
[email protected]Dana Hedgpeth contributed to this
report.statewide for all patients, and as
of Wednesday, about half were
available for coronavirus pa-
tients.
The “catastrophic scenario”
predicted “peak hospitalization
levels of about 15,000 patients,
assuming no further modifica-
tions of [the public’s] behavior.”
As the Washington area stares
down the beginning of a winter
surge, officials across the region
continue to urge residents who
traveled during the Thanksgiving
holiday to get tested. Hogan has
emphasized the message of avoid-
ing large crowds, wearing masks
and getting tested.
He would not say if or when he
might impose tougher restric-
tions, as some local officials have
urged him to do. When asked, he
said: “We’ll take them as we see
fit.”
In recent weeks, the governor
has ordered bars and restaurants
in Maryland to close at 10 p.m. for
dine-in service and capacity in
retail stores, religious facilities,
fitness centers, personal service
facilities and bowling alleys re-
duced t o 50 percent. He also limit-
ed visits to nursing homes.new daily fatalities, compared
with 20 on Nov. 1.
Maryland is requiring hospi-
tals to expand staffed bed capac-
ity by 10 percent within seven
days if 8,000 patients become
hospitalized statewide. As of
Tuesday, there were 6,816 pa-
tients in the state’s hospitals, in-
cluding with the coronavirus and
other illnesses.
A Nov. 13 modeling estimate
from Johns Hopkins Medicine —
which accurately predicted 1,400
coronavirus patients in Maryland
would be hospitalized by Thanks-
giving — outlined four scenarios
for the winter surge and its im-
pact on the state’s health-care
system.
Just one model, called the “op-
timistic scenario,” predicts the
state will have enough beds. It
calls that scenario, showing a
peak of 5,000 people hospitalized
with the coronavirus around Feb-
ruary, “highly unlikely” based on
the rapid ascent of cases now.
A “moderate scenario” model
predicts a peak of more than
8,000 patients by February, and a
“pessimistic” one predicts 10,000.
Maryland has about 10,000 bedstals to submit a “patient surge”
plan, which includes a detailed
strategy for increasing hospital
bed and staffing capacities. The
state Health Department must
receive the plans by Dec. 8.There were 3,500 patients
across Maryland, Virginia and the
District hospitalized Tuesday
with the coronavirus, up from
1,636 one month earlier. The
number of virus-related deaths
has also risen across the greater
Washington region, with the sev-
en-day average standing at 45more than double the aver ages of
early November.
Hogan said Tuesday that the
state Health Department is work-
ing with the Maryland Hospital
Association to recruit medical
personnel and support staff at the
state’s hospitals. The facilities are
in need of staff to provide screen-
ing, testing and treatment for
coronavirus patients.
Maryland is asking universities
to award academic credit to stu-
dents willing to work at hospitals
during the pandemic and to let
graduating students receive early
licensing.
Hogan said the state is also
urging counties to redeploy
school nurses to help at testing
and vaccination facilities and for
nursing homes to allow un -
licensed workers to perform less
critical tasks to “free up” nurses.
A new report from the Mary-
land Health Department shows
the dire direction in which the
state is headed. It found that the
state had enough staff for 1,846
beds for coronavirus patients and
that more than 85 percent of
those beds were occupied.
Hogan on Tuesday asked hospi-The governor said the number
of people hospitalized in the state
has increased 51 percent in the
past two weeks, while modeling
shows “the worse part of this
entire crisis is still ahead of us in
the next month or two.”
He said the state’s youngest
victim of the pandemic was a
1-year-old boy. State health offi-
cials had previously said the child
died Sunday, but other details
haven’t been released.
Maryland in recent weeks has
also recorded an increase in its
coronavirus test positivity rate.
The seven-day average Tuesday
was 7.33 percent, fueled in part by
a surge in rural parts of the state.
Somerset County on the Eastern
Shore has a positivity rate of near-
ly 20 percent, while Garrett and
Allegany counties in Western
Maryland are approaching 15 per-
cent.
The seven-day average number
of new cases across Maryland,
Virginia and the District on Tues-
day was 4,775 infections — down
slightly from a high of 4,989 re-
corded on Thanksgiving Day, but
REGION FROM B1
Hogan hopes to boost hospital capacity statewide as cases are expected to soar
“It’s a scary situation
for everybody involved.
We do see in the next
few days us hitting a
critical point.”
Maryland G ov. Larry Hogan(703) 650-9337 (202) 919-9209 (301) 778-4222